“It was the kind of confidence that every cowboy needed in dealing with an intimidating bronc. Still, the quickest way for a rider to get in trouble was to take undue pride in his ability…” – Patrick Dearen
Most cowboys carry a certain hubris that is intrinsic to their soul. It’s not something necessarily negative – it simply forms that part of them that allows for such an independent way of moving through life: you have to really believe in yourself to stay true to who you are. Call it hubris, call it pride, call it confidence, call it vanity – and I’ve certainly been called all of it over this last half-century – it’s a pillar of survival for the cowboy.
I am just a cowboy, lonesome on the trail
A starry night, a campfire light
The coyote call and the howlin’ winds wail
So I’ll ride out to the old sundown
I am just a cowboy lonesome on the trail
Lord, I’m just thinking about a certain female
The nights we spent together riding on the range
Looking back it seems so strange
A real cowboy bucks against the societal restraints that make most of us cling to our day jobs in service of family or mortgage. A cowboy wants no constraints or rules or laws. A cowboy seeks freedom and a day of riding – all a meditation unto themselves. A cowboy can be a very peaceable person when left to their own devices and code. Most of us can be, I suppose.
Roll me over and turn me around
Let me keep spinning ’til I hit the ground
Roll me over and let me go
Riding in the rodeo
The cowboy’s life can be messy, and it usually is. They work hard (sometimes) and they play hard (sometimes) and through it all they keep to their cowboy code even as it shifts beneath their boots. They’re used to shifting stirrups, to the instability of the animal between their legs. They know how to follow such movement; they become such movement, as if an extension of the animal itself. When you are the movement, you can never be pinned down. It’s like trying to catch the wind.
I was took in Texas I did not know her name
Lord, all these southern girls seem the same
Down below the border in a town in Mexico
I got my job busting broncs for the rodeo
Roll me over and turn me around
Let me keep spinning ’til I hit the ground
Roll me over and let me go
Running free with the buffalo
Here I go!
Roll me over and I’ll turn around
And I’ll move my fingers
Up and down, Up and down
It’s OK amigo
Just let me go
Riding in the rodeo
It’s often hard to love a cowboy. I won’t shoot my wad this early, just hint at what’s to come, so to speak. So yes, hard to love a cowboy. Or at least hard to love a cowboy type – the person that has that cowboy essence in them. It’s a sort of restlessness, a dissatisfaction with the lots in life afforded most of us. Coupled with a sort of hubris, an essential belief in themselves that life is theirs for the taking – for the riding, for the spinning and falling, and the freedom. When a person believes in themselves, it’s very difficult for others not to believe in them too. Or so it should seem to be, to me.
Roll me over and turn me around
Let me keep spinning ’til I hit the ground
Roll me over and let me go
Riding in the rodeo
Roll me over and set me free
The cowboy’s life is the life for me
